This is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast from The New Yorker magazine.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

Each month, we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.

This month, we're going to hear The night face up by Julio Cortazar,

which was translated from the Spanish by Paul Blackburn.

It appeared in the New Yorker in April of 1967.

He came too.

Abruptly, four or five young men were getting him out from under the cycle. He felt the taste of salt and blood. One knee hurt.

And when they hoisted him up, he yelled.

The story was chosen by Valeria Luseli, a MacArthur fellow and winner of the Folio Prize, among others.

She is the author of five books, including the novel Lost

Children Archive. Her new novel, Beginning Middle End, will be published in July.

Hi, Valeria. Hi, Deborah. So you had a fair number of ideas for stories you might want to read

today, and I'm wondering what made you settle on the night face up. Yes, that's a great question. I really wanted to read today, and I'm wondering what made you settle on the night face up?

Yes, that's a great question. I really wanted to read Shakespeare's memory.

Right. And then I, then you told me I was taken, by Vodges, which is strangely not that

different in its philosophical content from this one. We can speak about that later. And then when

you said it was taken, I went to the archives and looked, and

I realized that my very dear friend Hisham Mazar had already done that. And I thought, of course,

Hisham. And I heard that episode and you guys did a beautiful, beautiful job going into that story.

But Cortazar, you know, like Borges and maybe like Rolfo,

was the most influential writer for my generation of Latin American writers.

...